He suddenly checked himself threw himself into an easy chair, giving me a sign to be seated, and continued:
"But I did not come to talk with you about myself and my affairs. Your own have changed very much since we last met. Why sir, you are a great diplomatist! To let me talk and talk, and make you heaven knows what well-meant proposals, without indicating by word or look that you were, so to speak, over the mountain, at the foot of which I thought we both were standing! How you must have laughed in your sleeve! And poor Zehren! He pretended to be as much astonished as I was myself. But I believe he knew perfectly well how things stood, for though I have always considered him half fool, I have a strong suspicion that he is whole knave. I should be glad if anybody will take him off my hands; he is sometimes a real annoyance to me, and yet I do not want to send him away. I have been thinking that if I buy Zehrendorf from you, I might make him the bailiff of it, or rent the estate to him; but it has occurred to me that you might not like that arrangement. Am I right?"
"Your highness," I replied, "Arthur is certainly not the proper person for such a trust. In his hands all the excellent and most useful improvements that have been made at such heavy expense, would go to ruin. I confess that if I believed it to be your serious intention--instead of being, as I am sure, only the suggestion of your generous heart--I would even now at the twelfth hour endeavor to retain Zehrendorf in my father-in-law's possession, greatly as I desire, on other grounds, to effect a sale of it."
"You are right--it was only an idea," said the prince. "But why do you accord me this so flattering preference? You know that I have no longer the same interest in obtaining the property, that I had last spring, and that in consequence you will find me hard to deal with."
"But easier than Herr von Granow, at all events."
A pleasant smile played about the prince's refined lips.
"You may be right there," he said. "That fellow is a fox, despite his bulldog-face. He has sounded me once or twice through Zehren and the justizrath, to find out if I have still any thoughts of buying Zehrendorf. It seems that he wants to get all competitors out of the way, to be the only one upon the field, and then at the right moment, of which the justizrath will no doubt give him the sign, step in and secure the place for a song. No, sir, you shall not fall into the dirty hands of that rascal if I can help it."
"I thank your highness," I answered.
"I have to thank you," the prince replied, "that you again give me an opportunity to discharge an old debt that I owe you. Since you wrote to me I have reflected much upon your position: indeed I may say that at no time have you been entirely out of my mind, thanks to the good friends of your father-in-law. You yourself probably do not know how much is said about him, and how deeply he is sunk in general estimation. I am very sorry to say this; and I say it only because I feel it is due to you as the person nearest concerned, to let you know what others perhaps have not the courage to tell you, or conceal from you from malicious motives. The commerzienrath's credit seems to me greatly shaken; there is talk of immense losses that he has lately incurred; they say he speculates on 'Change and in all sorts of hazardous enterprises. I can assure you he is considered half insane and more than half ruined; though it is true that others maintain the old man was never clearer-headed than now, and never richer; and that if he plays the fool and the bankrupt, it is only one of his old feints, which have always been successful. What is your own opinion?"
I felt that the prince's kind advances to me deserved to be met with all sincerity, and so I stated to him in detail, as well as I could, the singular position in which I found myself placed with the commerzienrath, the subterfuges, equivocations and concealments of which he had been guilty to me; that I believed that while he was not yet the ruined man his enemies declared him to be, if he kept on in this way he would of necessity ruin himself sooner or later.